A stereotype is an incomplete or skewed magnification of a particular characteristic or set of characteristics generally expressed by a few within a given context or culture; those magnifications are then often disseminated through such mediums as words, actions, or visual portrayals thus propagating within a wider audience a “few represents the whole” mentality. In other words, a stereotype is “a set of inaccurate, simplistic generalizations about a group that allows others to categorize them and treat them accordingly.”[1] A stereotype is developed by taking something that could be true about a portion of a given group, then creating “simplistic generalizations” about that group for others to feast on. We all hold to stereotypical assumptions whether we realize it or not. In order to proudly position ourselves above others we form, mold, or adopt inaccurate generalizations about people. The stereotype is then heralded through jokes or printed material, for example. Although thickly veiled, this is just another way in which fallen man demonstrates his insatiable appetite to idolize himself while demonizing his neighbor. While we have an endless supply of stereotypes to choose from, there is one of particular interest to me for this occasion. Though my intentions at the moment are not to explore with any great depth the beginnings or unfolding of this stereotype, I do raise the topic in order to introduce the reader to the experience of the Appalachian migrant outside the rural mountains and inside urban settings during the Great Migration period.

“A Backward and Degenerate Place” Ron Eller writes, “Appalachian migrants everywhere met with resistance and prejudice from the local population. Pejorative stereotypes of Appalachia as a backward and degenerate place had become part of the national popular conception of the region since the turn of the century and these negative images followed mountain migrants to the cities.”[2] Ever since the “invention of Appalachia,” as some have called it, the Appalachian stereotype has become deeply embedded within the American conscious. By the time of the mountain migrants’ exodus to the cities, the stereotype had already found a home within the urban dweller’s mind. As Eller mentioned, the “negative images followed mountain migrants to the cities.” What must this experience have been like? Let us speculate for a moment. Many of these families had more than likely never been outside their own indigenous, cultural context before. All those unique cultural traits and characteristics that were possessed and held dear by the Appalachian family would have been so familiar to them as to be in their minds nonexistent or simply the normal way of life. For instance, I never thought of myself as having an accent before moving to the city. I grew up around those who spoke like me so I never perceived any differences in my speech as compared to other English speakers in the nation. Yet, as I soon found out by the continual and repetitive question I would receive after speaking, “Where are you from,” I realized that, yes, my accent is different. This is the point when the fish realizes that he is out of water, so to speak. When one is out of their sphere of familiarity, the differences are exposed and the alien nature of the new context presses in. It is at this juncture where one’s past, identity, and culture stare them directly in the face. For the Appalachian migrant, unfamiliarity with the new culture coupled with ridicule rooted in negative stereotypes from the urban population along with a host of other difficulties led to a daunting situation. One individual explains,

A lot of people that come to Cincinnati, including my parents, worked low-wage jobs; what they could get. They’re proud people; they don’t want to go on welfare. But you was pushed from one culture into another culture; I call it shock, shock probation, shock whatever you want to call it. It was very hard to make that adjustment, especially as kids. Now that I’m older, I know that for my mom and dad probably it had to be a bigger adjustment than what I had to make because it was the pride thing.[3]

Another briefly states, “They called us hillbillies. I never met nobody up there that’s not prejudiced against hillbillies.”[4] Upon being asked, “What was it like in Michigan,” one man replied, “Cold. The people. The people more so than the weather. Sometimes you get to feeling which ones was the coldest, the weather or the people.”[5] Is it any wonder, then, that so many urban neighborhoods became Appalachian neighborhoods? For many, the familiarity of family and friends who were going through a similar experience allowed for a smoother transition and eventually successful careers in the city, but for others, the pull of home drew them back to the mountains.

Stereotypes: True or False?

We have already determined a working definition for the word stereotype but going one step further we must ask, “Are stereotypes true or are they false?” David C. Hsiung answers our question: “Every stereotype has some basis in truth, but the danger comes when stereotypes make it easy to generalize and paint everyone with the same brush.”[6] Therefore, stereotypes have some basis in truth. The stereotype may rightfully describe a few within a given culture or group but that rightful description of the few does not legitimize a broad brush stroke across an entire culture or group. Hsiung expounds,

Do examples of poverty, violence, illiteracy, inbreeding, and laziness exist in Appalachia? Certainly, but that does not mean the entire region should be characterized by such terms…The analytical study of stereotypes teaches us that no people or place can be described uniformly. The details—the specifics of who, what, when, and where—do matter. Stereotypes deceive us into seeing the world as black and white when we should be looking not only for the many shades of gray but also the entire palette of other colors.[7]

Social Commentary Magazines and Ethnic Jokes At least two mediums were utilized to depict the broadly held Appalachian stereotype. The first was printed material. Concerning this effort, Anthony Harkins, author of Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon,[8] notes, “A growing regional concern in Midwestern cities since at least the 1930s, the southern migrant ‘problem’ was first announced on a national stage in a series of late 1950s articles in nationally circulated social commentary magazines.” One of those magazines was Harper’s. In 1958, the magazine contained an article written by Albert N. Votaw entitled, “The Hillbillies Invade Chicago.” With a slurry of verbal assaults, Votaw begins, “The city’s toughest integration problem has nothing to do with Negroes…It involves a small army of white, Protestant, Early American migrants from the South—who are usually proud, poor, primitive, and fast with a knife.”[9] One municipal court judge even commented, “I can’t say this publicly, but you’ll never improve the neighborhood until you get rid of them.”[10] For a final example (although there are others) from Votaw’s generalization-filled article, he says, “Clannish, proud, disorderly, untamed to urban ways, these country cousins confound all notions of racial, religious, and cultural purity.”[11] Votaw was not the only one in on the fun poking. The Chicago Tribune also had a part to play. One source recalls that “during the 1950s, the Tribune dispatched tough, oddball investigative reporter and Radcliffe grad Norma Lee Browning to Uptown for a series beginning with ‘Girl Reporter Visits Jungles of Hillbillies.’”[12] The article quotes her initial piece extensively,

Most authorities rate them at the bottom of the heap, socially, morally, mentally—and at the top of those migrant “undesirables” contributing to the city's increased crime rate. “The average Chicagoan doesn't realize it, but it isn't our own people committing the crimes—it's the migrants taking over, forcing our own long time residents to move out,” said Lt. Michael Delaney, head of the police juvenile section. “It's a dangerous situation, one that we have to wake up to and face. These migrants are United States citizens, free to roam anywhere they wish. But they have turned the streets of Chicago into a lawless free-for-all with their primitive jungle tactics” [said Walter Devereux, chief investigator for the Chicago Crime commission]. Authorities are reluctant to point a finger at any one segment of the population or nationality group, but they agree that the southern hillbilly migrants, who have descended on Chicago like a plague of locusts in the last few years, have the lowest standard of living and moral code [if any] of all, the biggest capacity for liquor, and the most savage and vicious tactics when drunk, which is most of the time.[13]

The second medium was ethnic jokes.[14] “Using imagery similar to that applied to other migrant populations…northerners developed a repertoire of ethnic hillbilly jokes that reflected deep-seated fears and a misunderstanding of mountain culture. Many of the jokes poked fun at the lack of education, sophistication, and resources of mountain migrants; others cruelly implied immorality and ignorance,”[15] explains Eller. In addition, “Southern Appalachian migrants became known across the Midwest by a number of derogatory labels, including SAMs, hillbillies, snakes, briar hoppers, and ridge runners.”[16] One such joke recorded by Eller involving a fundamentalist preacher who had moved to Cincinnati goes like this: “Did you know that the old country preacher was arrested? Yes, he was arrested for polluting the Ohio River…He was baptizing hillbillies in the river.”[17] In 1981, authors Clyde B. McCoy and Virginia McCoy Watkins listed what they saw as two harmful social implications of the ethnic humor targeting urban Appalachians. First, ethnic humor “reinforces the singularly negative stereotype of the referents.” They maintained that “ethnic humor permits few, if any, redeeming qualities of the referents to be portrayed.”[18] Second, the jokes “present a way of establishing stereotypes about a group where none existed, or giv[e] rise to more entrenched attitudes than were held before being involved in an ethnic humor session.”[19] Ultimately, these jokes failed to appreciate or even understand the many positive and praiseworthy traits of the migrants and, more often than not, denigrated the group to the bottom rung of the social ladder. Not About Race But ClassInterestingly, the experience of the Appalachian migrant was in many ways similar to the experience of other urban minorities, with a slight difference.

Though black migrants from the South experienced discrimination in part because of race and class, the predominately white Appalachian migrants suffered discrimination primarily because of cultural differences—or at least what were perceived to be differences—that were rooted in class. Speech patterns, clothing, diet, religious practices, and even the closeness of the Appalachian family seemed to set the migrants apart from other urbanites.[20]

Yet, Harkins argues for reasons beyond just class and social customs. He suggests,

The greatest concern about these migrants was not simply their poverty or social customs, but that they were impoverished whites at a time when many middle-class whites felt that only blacks and other minorities were “supposed” to be poor. Northern whites, who had long associated poverty, laziness, drunkenness, and violence with blacks and other people of color, now found such racial demarcations threatened by what they saw as similar habits among Protestant Anglo-Saxons living in (in a racially freighted label) “hillbilly jungle[s].”[21]

Conclusion A short study such as the one above has the potential to spark many emotions; emotions such as pity for the mountain migrant or hatred towards city dwellers, for example. But I believe another response is more fitting. McCoy and Watkins, who pointed out the negative impact of ethnic jokes (above), also pointed out a positive social implication of the jokes: an increased sense of group solidarity. The group solidarity achieved through these “hillbilly” jokes is, I would argue, a proper and necessary response to the stereotype faced by the Appalachian inside or outside the region even today. This response of group solidarity is not one of superiority or group-centrism, but one of humility. Humility in the knowledge that it is the providential hand of God who has created and directed the formation of all cultures, and it is in his Son we find our value, not in the opinions and false stereotypes held by others.

Hey, I am doing a sociological study on the stereotyping of Appalachia and I would greatly appreciate if you could give me some helpful information for my paper, if that's possible.

Reply

Josh Kilgore

3/1/2014 01:05:41 am

Kevin,

I am in no way a scholar with regard to Appalachian Studies, so I would point you to those that have spent their time researching the topic. I would encourage you, though, to look at the early developments of the Appalachian stereotype, the mediums and groups by which it has been propagated over time, and maybe its continued existence today. "Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes" by Dwight Billings and others is pretty thorough. "Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Confronting the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes" by David. C. Hsiung provides a good example of the development of stereotypes within northeast Tennessee's early days. He also has a chapter on stereotypes in the "High Mountains Rising" book cited above. Once you get into those resources, I've found it helpful to just dig around into other sources that they happen to mention. If you have access to anyone who has moved outside the Appalachian region into a more urban area, ask them what their experience has been like. That may be your best resource. Hope that's helpful and thanks for reading!

Josh, I enjoyed reading this post. I am the daughter of Appalachian migrants from Eastern Kentucky and have recently begun a blog geared towards other Appalachian migrants and their descendants. Here is the link...http://www.appalrootfarm.com/ Have a blessed week!

Reply

Josh Kilgore

12/2/2014 11:35:07 pm

I am extremely late with this reply. But thanks for taking time to read, Lorene. Continue the good work! Grace to you and peace during this Advent season.